Week Five Overview

This week has been crazy, finals and finishing up projects. BUT! I did manage to cook! As mentioned before, I wanted to try to cook salads, lettuce wraps, baked potatoes, and stew. All but the baked potatoes happened this week! Monday I make a yummy stew in the crock pot using the potatoes and celery from the basket. It has lasted all week and I've been enjoying it almost every day as a leftover for lunch! Tuesday Cherie (my aunt that I live with) made a delicious Chef Salad. For this she used the lettuce from the basket. Then, skip to Friday and I made lettuce wraps (using, of course, more lettuce from the basket). They were pretty good, I was surprised because as I was cooking the flavor just tasted a little bland, but as soon as I mixed all the flavors together into my piece of lettuce it all came together and was awesome. I also decided that the mixture would be delicious on top of some brown rice!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get any pictures of my yummy treats this week, but I will post the recipe I used for my lettuce wraps. See below:

Ingredients:

• 16 Boston Bibb or butter lettuce leaves
• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 2 teaspoons minced pickled ginger
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• Asian chile pepper sauce (optional)
• 1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
• 1 bunch green onions, chopped
• 2 teaspoons Asian (dark) sesame oil

Directions:

1. Rinse whole lettuce leaves and pat dry, being careful not tear them. Set aside.
2. In a medium skillet over high heat, brown the ground beef in 1 tablespoon of oil, stirring often and reducing the heat to medium, if necessary. Drain, and set aside to cool. Cook the onion in the same pan, stirring frequently. Add the garlic, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, ginger, vinegar, and chile pepper sauce to the onions, and stir. Stir in chopped water chestnuts, green onions, sesame oil, and cooked beef; continue cooking until the onions just begin to wilt, about 2 minutes.
3. Arrange lettuce leaves around the outer edge of a large serving platter, and pile meat mixture in the center. To serve, allow each person to spoon a portion of the meat into a lettuce leaf. Wrap the lettuce around the meat like a burrito, and enjoy!

This week has also been a little off because my Uncle (that I live with) found out he is diabetic. So, my aunt and I have been trying to come up with ways that we can change the diet for everyone in the house to make sure that my uncle is eating healthier. So, this may change some of the recipes for a little while to ensure that they are diabetes friendly!

Over Thanksgiving....

Whenever I go home to St. George me and my mom and sisters (well, mostly just jess, not erika) bake/cook up a storm.

This time, on top of the yummy ham we made for thanksgiving with our homemade glaze, we

also made Pie in a Jar, Garlic-Cheesy Rolls, Sweet Potato Bread, and Persimmon & Banana Pudding.

This was our Garlic Cheesy Rolls. Too much cheese for me, but Jessi (the cheese queen) LOVED them. All we did was get the already made dough from Smiths or Walmart (French Bread Dough) and roll it out. Then we spread garlic butter all over it and put a bunch of mozzarella cheese on the top of that. Then roll it up and slice into about 2-3 in pieces. Then spray a muffin tin with cooking spray and put a roll in each hole. Then bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. (Make sure to check them periodically to make sure they aren't burning on top. If they are browning too much, cover the top with a sheet of aluminum foil)

The picture below is a picture of one of our little pies that we made. This was quite the adventure for us. We looked at like 5 different stores trying to find the right size jars and finally, at our last stop, Albertsons, we found them! On these we also bought pre-made dough (pie crust from Smiths or Walmart). Wash the jars and dry thoroughly. Roll out the

dough until pretty thin, only a few centimeters thick and cut into 6 inch circles. Place a circle of dough in each jar and press into the side of the jar until covered and pulled up to the lip of the jar. Make whatever pie filling you want and fill each jar to the top with the filling. Choose the crust you want. On our apple ones we did a simple crumble top and on the cherry ones we did a lattice. Then seal and freeze. Unless you want one right then! Then heat your oven to 375 and

cook right in the jar for 45 minutes. If you choose to freeze it and then eat it heat your oven to 375 and then bake a little longer- about 50-55 minutes. Here is a link to the original recipe that I used: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/09/single-serving-pie-in-jar.html

Now, unfortunately I made like 8-10 of these at my mom's and forgot to bring any of them back up to Salt Lake with me! So! This week we got more apples in the basket and some blackberries so those might be some yummy pies that I'll be making!

I didn't get a picture of the Persimmon & Banana Pudding. To be clear, these were two separate puddings: One Persimmon and One Banana. They were also a bread pudding, not a slimy gooey pudding. But! They were DELICIOUS! This was the recipe for the Persimmon Pudding:

Ingredients

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups persimmon pulp
• 2 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 4 tablespoons melted butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Butter one 9x13 inch baking pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine persimmon pulp, baking soda, sugar and eggs. Mix well.
3. Add flour, baking powder, cinnamon, vanilla, salt, milk and melted butter. Stir to combine.
4. Pour into baking pan and bake for 55 minutes. The pudding will rise but will fall when removed from oven.

We changed the recipe a little bit based on the comments on the website. We added less sugar, less milk and we also stirred the pudding every 15 minutes while baking. Stirring it made it really lumpy and kinda gross looking (like cat puke) but it tasted REALLY good. Then when we did the banana pudding we used the same recipe but just exchanged bananas for persimmons pulp. This time we didn't stir it and it came out looking like a cake but was way more moist and delicious. Then my mom made this yummy frosting/syrup thing to put on it, but I don't have that recipe (I'll have to ask her for it).

And the last recipe we did over Thanksgiving was the Sweet Potato Bread. We made a ton of this. We had 4 cups of mashed sweet potatoes so we made 2 huge loaves and 4 mini loaves. I'm pretty sure they all got eaten up!

Bounty Hunter

Week Five

Man, talk about slackers lately...

New week, new dedication :)

There were some pretty good selection in the basket today.

The Bounty

Fruits:

- 6 Apples

- 1 Cantaloupe

- 3 Asian Pears

- 8 oz Blackberries

- 1 Pineapple

- 1 bunch Bananas

Veggies:

- 2 (huge) Cucumbers

- 4 Yellow Squash

- 1 Spaghetti Squash

- 2 heads Lettuce

- 4 Tomatoes

- 1 stock Celery

Extra:

- 1 Gingerbread House Kit

I see some lettuce wraps, salads, stew, and mini-pie-in-a-jars in the near future.

Bounty Hunter